Pill in the Works to Turn Sweat into Perfume

Oct. 26, 2011— -- Those sweat stains could be the equivalent to a spritz of cologne if Lucy McRae's research pans out.

McRae, an artist based in the Netherlands, hopes to create Swallowable Parfum, a perfume that can be ingested through a capsule and emitted through perspiration.

The pill is still in the research phase with no scheduled release date as McRae works with synthetic researcher, Sheref Mansy, to develop a prototype.

"My main aim is to provoke and make people think in a completely different way about how make-up can be [used] in the future," said McRae.

The 31-year-old was inspired to develop the line after watching a documentary on Ray Kurzweil, a computer engineer who won the National Medal of Technology and who has written numerous books about how machines will shape the future.

Rather than create a uniform scent, McRae envisions that each user's own scent would be amplified by the digestible perfume like a "base note."

George Preti, a scientist at the Monell Center which specializes in taste and smell, says pills that claim to change body odor similar to Swallowable Parfum are often not effective due to the body's digestion process.

"How much of what they do that will make it through the digestive process and [into] the blood remains to be seen," said Preti. "A lot of things will get taken apart in the acid in the stomach."

Since taking a daily dose of perfume isn't yet possible, McRae is staying with her scent of choice, Mona Di Orio, applied with a traditional spritz.

McRae's Swallowable Parfum is the latest in a trend of cosmetic companies attempting to reduce beauty regimens to pill form. In recent years companies such as Heliocare and Murad have released pills that claim to provide sun protection. However these pills do not provide the same protection as traditional sunblock.

L'Oreal announced earlier this month that they're working on an "anti-grey" supplement that would keep hair from turning grey with age.